Off-the-grid recommendations for this month’s subscription streaming service range from soft seijin-shiki to pitch-black comedy, unexpectedly affectionate action photography, and three documentaries about influential fashion artists. It covers. , Music and Threes.
“Beta test” (2021)
Writer, director and actor Jim Cummings established an on-screen persona (groping and uneasy, but ultimately a broad-minded Everyman) in the groundbreaking movie “Thunder Road”, “hollow in the snow. Moved the character to the genre area with “Wolf”. In this third feature (this time in collaboration with his co-writer and co-director PJ McCabe), Cummings leads the character in a clearly darker direction, putting his career (and imminent marriage) at risk if someone creates it. Plays the Hollywood agent of the hot shot he is exposed to, he has a sexual offer he can’t refuse. Cummings and McCabe slip into darker corners than expected, but the sides of the comic and thriller mix easily and the results are thrilling and unpredictable.
This Canadian seijin-shiki drama about the dangers of gay growth was released at about the same time as “Moonlight,” and is certainly overshadowed by comparison. But the “closet monster” is certainly its own. A serious and lively portrait of a very realistic stigma, fear of becoming a strange child, and the resulting adolescent anxiety. Connor Jessup quietly influences as a teenager Oscar desperately trying to shake the emotional wounds of her homosexual father (chilling Aaron Abrams) after her parents’ divorce. Is giving. Writer and director Steve Doll was only 26 years old when the film debuted. His closeness to youth is a real virtue. This is a filmmaker who remembers the electricity of the first kiss, the groping of the first sexual encounter, and the satisfaction of being free from the toxic effects.
“ Thoroughbred” (2018)
Before “Queen’s Gambit” starred her, Anya Taylor-Joy stood in front of this wonderfully dark comedy from writer and director Cory Finley (who also follows up with the relentless “Bad Education”). rice field. Taylor-Joy and Olivia Cooke (“Sound of Metal”) played childhood friends and reunited in their youth. A sad, hopeful conversation about killing their father-in-law turns into a non-fictitious realm. Taylor-Joy and Cook are fun to watch, their two scenes are a cascade of dry wit and deadpan underplay, and Finley’s stylish direction accurately shows the correct combination of dry humor and rafter theater. ..
I’ve seen a lot of Victorian Serio comic dramas, many of which feature many of these prestige casts such as Hugh Dancy, Rupert Everett, Felicity Jones, Gemma Jones, and Jonathan Pryce. But this is not the story of class struggle or the babbling of love. No, this is the story of how Dr. Mortimer Granville (Dancy) invented the vibrator while pursuing the treatment of “hysteria” (female orgasm). Director Tanya Wexler and her stiff upper lip cast apparently take the kick out of their violent subject and adjust their playing accordingly, but Maggie Gyllenhaal is included in this development and it. I am delighted as a proto-feminist who grabs power.
“Universal Soldier: Reckoning Day” (2012)
The first-person POV drama of the brutal house invasion that opens the picture of this hurt action is very visceral and upset, and feels more like a Gaspar Noé button pusher kick-off than the third sequel to the 90’s shoot. Masu-’em-above. From there, director John Hyams rarely gives up. He is less interested in cheap thrills and fan service than nightmarish images and unforgettable portraits of overwhelming sadness. The series’ regulars Jean-Claude Van Damme and Dolph Lundgren are at hand, but the focus is on the new protagonist (played by Scott Adkins, a favorite of direct action on the video), and Hyams soaked in neon. Following with a strobe-Fire plunges into death and despair. The battle scene provides punchless strength in the darkness adjacent to nihilism, throwing it away and turning it into an interrogation of what we want and expect in action films.
When journalist and stylist André Leon Talley died this year, praise came from some of the most influential figures in the fashion world. A little-known person couldn’t ask for a better summary of his life and achievements than this energetic and entertaining documentary directed by Kate Novak. Tally’s story is a fascinating story of isolated southern poor children who used fashion magazines as a form of fantasy and escape and continued to fill those pages with his distinctive words and styles. The archived footage is fun and his interviews with his contemporaries are insightful, but Tally’s own commentary is a real attraction — as always, he’s arrogant, entertaining and awesome.
“Indians who rocked the rumble music world” (2017)
The lineage of rock music has always been of great interest to historians and performers who tended to agree on the influence of gospel, blues, soul and country style on the early 1950s formational recordings. This documentary by Catherine Bainbridge and Alfonso Maiorana sheds light on Native American musicians, a lesser-recognized source of information. “Rumble” is a welcome round of archeology and a lagging credit that explores both the music itself and the trials and victories of some of its practitioners. And, of course, the music is great.
When aired in the late 1980s, in just two seasons, the Morton Downey Jr. Show was every corner as a lowest common denominator television, a “talk show” provoking primarily using an “opla” style panel format. Was blamed. , And talk about the trash and feed the host of chain smoking. This thoughtfully and well-constructed documentary snapshot of pop culture ubiquitous that its host and he enjoyed easily is of a show against subsequent “end of civilization” fares like “Jerry Springer Show” and “Morley.” It was clear that it was released when it was affected. From our point of view, we can see how it influenced and expressed the slowly changing flow of conflicting political discourse.
